Linux Container (LXC) 2.1 released with a lot of new features

The Linux Container team has announced release of LXC 2.1, latest stable release of tools, templates, language binding and libraries that support every containment technology offered by Linux Kernel. The LXC 2.1 release brings various new features after release of LXC 2.0.

LXC 2.1 release is not a long term supported release and hence it will be supported for a period of one year only. Those who prefer to have long term containment technology should stick with LXC 2.0, which will be supported till June 2021.

Citing from original release announcement appeared in Linux Container forums, following are features introduced in LXC 2.1 release.

Support to limit use of any resources : Similar to requesting specific cgroup limits users can specify any
limits for any resource the underlying kernel is ware of by prefixing
the name of the limit with "lxc.prlimit." in the container's
configuration file.

Support for unprivileged openvswitch networks : It is now possible to define openvswitch networks as an unprivileged user

Support for hybrid cgroup layout : Since the advent of cgroup v2 some init systems have decided to allow
for a hybrid mode in which cgroup v1 per-controller hierarchies can be
used simultaneously with an empty cgroup v2 hierarchy.

Ability to limit number ptys a container can allocate : Setting lxc.pty.max will cause LXC to mount the container's devpts with the requested limit on the number of useable ptys. For example, setting lxc.pty.max = 10 will only allow the container to allocate 10 ptys. The default setting is 1024.

Extended log API

Deprecation of lxc-monitord

Various configuration changes

For complete list of changes in LXC 2.1 release, see original release announcement published by Linux Containerteam.